- The Vocoder was originally designed…in the 1930's as a way to code speech for transmission.…It was later re-purposed by the music world…and became widely sought after sound…by bands like KraftWerk, New Order, Daft Punk, Imogen Heap,…and countless other acts over the following decades.…Vocoders work by examining incoming signal.…Usually a vocal, which we'll refer to as the modulator.…It measures how its spectral…characteristics change over time.…This results in a series of signals…representing these frequencies,…that are split into separate bands.…

The more bands the modulator is split into…the more true to the original it…will sound after being processed.…The less bands the more synthetic it will sound.…It's like analog resolution.…A vocoder also needs a carrier…which in most musical instances…is a simple yet robust sound such as a saw tooth wave.…When the vocoder combines the carrier in the modulator,…the modulator takes on the sonic…characteristics of the carrier.…The result is often described as a robotic voice.…

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Released

10/24/2014

Make your EDM tracks stand out. Ditch the canned sounds and learn how to add texture, sheen, and movement to your productions with these extreme sound-mangling techniques, which are based on J. Scott G's production and remix experience with artists like Adam Lambert, Shiny Toy Guns, Madonna, and David Bowie. He'll show you how to create and tweak sounds with vocoders; faders, flangers, and chorus effects; reverb and delay; EQ and filters; distortion; time stretching; and glitches and granular synthesis. The final bonus chapter digs into the loops included with J. Scott's Twisted System sample pack, which comes free with the exercise files for this course. These techniques are both practical and inspirational, providing tools for creating new sounds and ideas for making electronic dance music that sounds even more creative and unique.

Note: This course was recorded in Ableton Live, but the tutorials can be used with any digital audio workstation.